


Barely Criminal

by Maarkriifaas



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, M/M, Murder, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:19:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maarkriifaas/pseuds/Maarkriifaas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't talk about it much anymore. Only when they're drunk and Levi is working himself open on Erwin's cock, when they're both worlds apart and much too far away to hear the words coming from their own mouthes. For Levi, it's still not far enough, and every word he does manage to hear haunts him like an angry ghost.</p><p> </p><p> -    -    -  (AU where Levi is an infamous hired assassin and Erwin is one of the head police officers in the city trying to catch him.  -    -    - </p>
            </blockquote>





	Barely Criminal

It's a mutual agreement. Neither one of them could have said exactly where it began, but at some point in time Levi Ackerman wound up in Erwin's bed, and no amount of logical reasoning could have ever explained it. The first time he was between his legs he told himself it meant nothing,  _this means nothing. Just a good fuck._

A really, _really_ good fuck.

 _Doesn't mean anything,_ he repeated to himself, the same mantra he replayed over and over. Half the city could have testified he was a good fuck after all, probably half of the other police officers too, despite the ridiculous bounty on him. The other half was married.

When he found Levi back in his bed a week later, he knew he might have a bigger problem though, because Levi gave no signs that it was strange at all. He'd appeared randomly in front of his apartment one night and pushed his way through.

"What are you doing here?" Erwin asks, his voice uncertain and wavering as he shuts the door behind him.

"I wanted to sleep with you again," he says casually, shrugging off his studded jacket. "Is that alright?" His tongue was in Erwin's mouth again before he could have protested properly. He tastes like cigarettes and cheap breathmints and broken rules and Erwin can't fucking get enough.

 _No,_ he thinks, his head spinning as he pulls back.

"Yes," he says.

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

The truth is, it would have been more than alright if it had been under any other circumstances, but as it stood he shouldn't even be  _talking_ to Levi. Not in the sunlight, when other people could see him at least. But by night, Levi's element, the element he's always favoured in somehow, the effect is dampened, an old scar compared to a fresh wound.

He doesn't see Levi during the day anyways, or he hopes not to at least. He hears about what he's done, he's seen footage of him, in fact he rewatches it now because why not. That's not really the same Levi pulling the trigger of that gun though. The Levi who murders and the Levi he beds are two different people, separated by the thin veil of his denial. He barely thinks about how he only ever comes in to the apartment complex through the garage door, where Erwin told him the camera was outdated and didn't work in the dark, why Erwin's clothes are always folded neatly on his chair the morning after, with no sign of Levi left to be found. He's made himself believe it's because he's shy, even though Levi is anything but.

One night his resolve cracks, and he finally asks him. The question is stupid enough without the bemused look he gives him, a single thin eyebrow raised in an arch over the grey-blue of his eyes.

"You can't be serious," he replies, his naked body still as he lies against the crisp, cold blankets. His long-ish, wild hair falls in front of his eyes, giving an almost shaggy effect to an otherwise angular, lean body. Smoke dances from his lips as he exhales.

"I am," Erwin says, and Levi grins. He's not angry about it, just amused, maybe even a little intrigued.

"I might be, and?" he asks, his voice leering. "If you'd wanted to arrest me, you would have done it our first night. This isn't our first night, Erwin," and Erwin knows it's true because he's been thinking the same thing.

"I'm not too eager to put you in a pair of handcuffs," he admits, "not like that at least."

"You're a pervert," Levi snorts. His eyes have dark bags under them and his face is empty under the fake smile he wears. He snuffs the cigarette out on the bedstand and turns to face him again. "But so am I. That's why we got together to begin with, right?" he says, and suddenly Erwin is uncomfortable with it all over again, because he uses the word _together_.

"You're not planning on killing me, are you?" he asks.

"A month ago, I might have. A month from now, well, we'll see," he says, slightly more seriously than Erwin would have liked. "I'm not planning on it," he clarifies a hesitant moment later, his eyes wandering across the room. "Just don't piss me off."

"I'll try not to," he says, and their bodies melt together once again.

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

At work, things are normal. As normal as they could be when he's sleeping regularly with the same murderer he's also trying to catch, but that's besides the point. Normal that is until one Thursday Nile comes in with a young girl, kicking and screaming, the childish pigtails not suiting the death threats that pour liberally from her mouth.

"I'll fucking  _kill you!"_ she spits, her green eyes wide with fury. Nile holds the back of her handcuffs. His face is even more smug than usual. 

"We caught her a couple blocks away from Grand Boulevard, behind an empty lot. One of the undercovers told us where to look," he says nonchalantly, ignoring her as she whirled around and attempted to attack his legs with a flurry of kicks. "She's been like this since Mike had to hold her down and force her into the damn things, as if the fact she can run like the devil isn't bad enough."

"Is she part of _them?"_ he asks, and Nile nods. Neither one has to specify who they're talking about, because  _them_ only means one thing, and that's just Erwin's luck. Not a lead for months,  _months,_ and now he doesn't want them they decide to pop up.

"We're not sure, but she had a gun, and some other stuff. Knives mostly."

"I'll kill you!" she shouts again. "And if you kill me first, then he'll kill you!" 

"You'd better run Erwin," Nile jokes. "She thinks someone is going to bother trying to break into police headquarters to break her out." he drawls. He turns, addressing the girl now. "You should know by now, single pawns like you are useless. You skitter around the cities like _cockroaches,_ less than the filth under your fingernails, and -"

" _Shut up!"_ she roars, and Nile's mouth snaps shut.

"Enough." Erwin's face is calm, but his hands are becoming sweaty. Levi doesn't have to break into headquarters to kill him, Levi barely needs a gun to kill him. He knows it too, because he's seen how effortlessly he acts, the smooth motions, the accurate stab forward and down into a chest. He thinks of how exposed he is when he's splayed out the way he is every other night now, how easy it would be to end it.

"Erwin?" Nile says. "You alright? You spaced out there for a second."

"Yeah." He shakes his head. "Lock her somewhere safe, but don't do anything with her yet, ok?" he orders, and the girl is screaming again.

"He'll kill you!" she says, voice high and desperate. "He promised he'd protect all of us!"

"Should I muzzle her too?" Nile says, but the disapproving look Erwin shoots him is enough to quiet him again.

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

Levi shows up the next night, calm, and Erwin almost believes what Nile had said. That she was worthless. That it was empty threats and nothing more. 

"You brought stuff?" he asks, and Levi pulls a string of condoms from the inside of his jacket. By time Erwin closes the door, he's already stripped down to just his pants.

"I'm topping," he declares suddenly, his expression hardening a bit. If Erwin is surprised, he masks it well. 

"Alright," he says, pulling his own shirt over his head. Levi leaves no time for thoughts, a hand reaches out and grabs him around the waist, walking him backwards. He's not even fully undressed when he's forced down on the couch, the bed apparently too far away for them to bother waiting. "You're impatient tonight," he says, and Levi responds by forcing his lips onto Erwin's. His hand is in his briefs a moment later, followed by another slow series of kisses and love bites.

"So what if I am?" he asks, voice low and syrupy. He claws at Erwin's chest with the other hand, and he already knows the long, red, angry scratches will leave marks. "Maybe I'm just a little frustrated lately," he says, and the thrill of knowing Levi was frustrated for _him_ makes him even more excited. Erwin doesn't bottom much, not when he can avoid it because Levi isn't a very gentle, slow type of person. Tonight, truth be told, he doesn't want slow or easy.

He's just getting into it, lean his head back and exposing his neck when he feels something cold on his throat. He laughs a little,  _should have seen it_ he thinks before he peers upwards slightly.

"I was enjoying myself you know," he says, but Levi's expression is cold, ruthless.

"Don't play idiot with me," he orders, and Erwin laughs again. He feels a thin line of blood leaking down his neck where the blade digs in the most, and he wonders for a moment if Levi will bother to clothe his dead body, or if he'll leave it the way it is now, lying almost buck naked on the couch.

"Why would I play idiot?" he says innocently.

Levi's eyes falter a moment, and Erwin sees it, but he doesn't move to react. "Where is she?"

"Locked up at work, though have fun getting her out of there. That much I'm not responsible for, I promise."

"Fuck," Levi says softly, and the knife drops. Erwin tries to sit up, but a hand is forced on his throat again, fixing his head to the couch. Levi has him in total submission; he couldn't have moved even if he'd wanted to. "How many guards?"

"Just the regular patrol I'm pretty sure. No more than three." Erwin's gaze is steeled, slightly amused as he stares up at him. "You can't actually be thinking you'll go and break her out," he says, but Levi isn't listening. "What is she to you anyways to have you so hyped up?" he asks cockily, and that finally gets his attention, because the hand around his neck tightens.

"Don't you dare, don't you  _dare_ talk to _me_ like that." His other hand wraps around the first, cutting his breath off. "She's my  _fucking sister._ " 

" _I'm-orry,_ " Erwin rasps.

"Then get her  _out!"_ Levi yells desperately, his hands loosening as he collapsed forward slightly. Under where his fingers had been a moment before, violet bruises were already blooming.

Erwin shakes his head between coughs. He stares at the ceiling, listless, the water stains heavy and dark. "I can't," he says helplessly. "You  _know_ that."

"Your stubbornness might kill my sister, do youknow _that?_ " 

"I know," Erwin says.

It takes a moment for them to recover, Levi flat against his chest, Erwin still wheezing slightly. When they do though, Levi begins groping at him again as though nothing has happened. His pink tongue flicks out and licks at the spot where he'd nearly sliced him open a couple minutes ago, trailing up his jawline.

"No," Erwin protests weakly, but the feeling of a hand slithering down his body is enough to shatter his resolve.

"Please," Levi says, refusing to look him in the eye. He looks defeated, _wrong_ , like a racehorse with a broken leg, and Erwin finally nods slowly, more out of pity than want.

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

Levi doesn't come back, both embarrassed and angry. It would bother Erwin more, but maybe it's better like this. The girl says her name is Isabel when they interrogate her, but refuses to say anything else. She doesn't fight this time, the week in a jail cell taking its toll on her, but she doesn't crack either. 

"Look," Erwin says, desperate to get somewhere with her. "I know I seem like the bad guy here, but just-"

"Don't even try pulling the good-cop-bad-cop on me," she says, her tone rough. "I'm not telling you anything about him, or about Far, you got me? Not his eye colour, what he had for breakfast, nothing." she spits. Erwin can only assume Far is a code name.

"I'm not asking you to," he says, exasperated. Isabel sits up a bit straighter, her expression strong. "I just want the truth." He almost said he already knew, then bit his tongue. This was being recorded after all.

"Depends what that truth is," she sniffs.

"Have you yourself killed anyone? If not, legally speaking, you could get off a lot easier. Obviously." He tries to sound sincere, but the effect is lost in a roll of her eyes.

"I'm not answering that, but we all do what we have to," she shrugs. "Not like a rich bastard like you would understand anyways, so who cares."

He thinks about the lifeless, cold, pale bodies if they're lucky enough to find them soon after, or the yellow, peeling skin of the victims found sometimes _weeks_ later, the blood pooled and splattered everywhere. His eyes narrow slightly in disgust. "Can't say I do."

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

One night, Levi does show up again. It's two thirty-seven in the morning, and his hands are still bloody. For that matter, his leather jacket is sticky too, and the gleaming metal studs shine with an unsettling redness to them. Like he'd put someone through a meat grinder. He goes to shower wordlessly, and eventually Erwin joins him.

Neither one of them speaks, because Erwin knows exactly what's happened. 

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

Isabel has disappeared from her jail cell, and two officers were killed between the one and two AM shifts. The security footage has been removed, so everyone assumes she broke herself out, naturally. 

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

Levi ditches the jacket when he finds the stains refuse to wash out of the woollen inside of the coat, even when he uses bleach. He also gets a haircut. His black hair is now neatly parted down the middle, a few dark strands catching on his forehead. He's almost unrecognizable already, which is perfect, because all the previous footage they have of him is old and barely decipherable to begin with.

"I like this look," Erwin says the first time he turns up. He's wearing a beaten-up grey hoodie, his hands shoved deep into the pockets. On the front it says _Sina University_ in bold burgundy letters. "Especially the sweatshirt."

"It's from back when I used to care," he jokes, though there's a hint of seriousness too that shouldn't be there. "I dug it out of a box I was planning on burning, and decided it'd keep me warmer that the fire it'd make. Besides, it doesn't matter, does it? It'll be off in a minute."

Erwin doesn't respond, but his depressed expression speaks volumes his voice could never hope to. He holds the door anyways, and Levi walks in without a word.

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

Life trundles onwards like it always does. Work is slow, and Levi blends into the background noise of corruption, crime, and monthly driving ticket quotas again. Some political figure dies of a heart attack, and some new bumbling idiot is promoted. Erwin couldn't care less.

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

He wakes up alone, no different than he expected. There's a spot where someone else was sleeping recently next to him, and the sheets reek of sweat, among other things. He's surprised when he walks out of the bedroom though and sees Levi eating a bowl of cereal at the table. He's got a newspaper laid flat next to it, and in between bites he leans over to scan the sports columns.

"Morning," he says, not bothering to look up. Erwin doesn't move; his body might as well have been stone.

"What are you doing here?" he says.

"Eating breakfast?" Levi says, a bit confused. "Am I not supposed to like cereal, or..?"

Erwin shakes his head, because it's not that, not even close to it. "You could be caught," he says, "and we both know what happens when you get caught."

Levi shrugs, as though the idea doesn't really bother him. "If that concerned me, I'd be gone by now." He eats another mouthful before he looks down again and comments on the paper. "Yankees won last night."

 

\-   -   -   -   -   -   -

 

They don't talk about it much anymore. Only when they're drunk and Levi is working himself open on Erwin's cock, when they're both worlds apart and much too far away to hear the words coming from their own mouthes. For Levi, it's still not far enough, and every word he does manage to hear haunts him like an angry ghost.

" _We can't.._ " he'll breathe sometimes, but his breath always catches in his throat because Levi won't let him finish. A moment later he'll follow up with something along the lines of " _It's wrong, morally I mean._ " Sometimes he wonders if he says the same things, but he doubts it.

Wrong wasn't what they were doing. Wrong was when you shoplifted. Wrong was when you smoked your first joint, or did your first line, or washed your hands with someone else's blood. What they were doing was pitting two organizations against each other, a deadly dance where neither one could be allowed to win. Erwin told him the police's next moves, Levi left him with enough small victories to make the rest of them believe they were getting somewhere.

It was a game now. A vicious, cruel, game of death.

They were sitting silently, half-asleep, when Erwin spoke suddenly.

"Do you ever use it?"

"Use what?" Levi asks, a bit confused.

"You know. Drugs and stuff, to numb you or something like that," Erwin says.

"No." His response is immediate. "I prefer to always have my senses about me," he says. He pauses a moment, then adds, "Sometimes I use sleeping pills, if those count."

A moment of silence passes between them, before Erwin's eyes flutter open again and he turns his head to look at him. They're red, bloodshot from the late nights he's been working to make sure they're well-hidden, and if that's not proof that he can trust him, nothing is.

"Do you like it then?"

"Hm?"

"Killing."

Levi thinks for an instant. "I guess I must," he lies.

"I could never justify it," Erwin says, his words slurred together. "Even when it was really me or them. How do you do it?" he asks, rolling onto his stomach.

Levi doesn't speak, but his stomach is churning when he thinks about the dozens of times he's seen life sapped from a body. "I don't know," he answers finally, and all he can think right then is _stop,_ stop because he doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't like thinking about the consequences of what he does, he doesn't want to remember someday he might have to kill Erwin too. His hands are perpetually stained by now, and even scrubbing them raw wouldn't help. "It's always felt like it was me or them in the end. They die or we starve."

Erwin pulls him close, probably detecting the emotions he's barely trying to hide anymore. It's a mutual agreement that they both know is dangerous beyond belief.

"Hey Erwin," he asks, his head tilted to the side. His composure collapses entirely now, just for a second. "I want to stay here for a little while, in the moment of right now, just with you. Is that alright?"

Erwin looks back for a second, before he chuckles ever so slightly.

 _Yes,_ he thinks.

"Yes," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> So um, I know I haven't posted in *forever*, but I promise, good things are coming. Mainly I've been working on a 10,000+ oneshot eruri (for the past month and a half kill me but it's gonna be so good) and it's being a bitch to finish, plus some minor fluffy ideas and I dunno. 
> 
> Anyways, enjoy the 3000 words of bullcrap I spun out with a good idea and shitty writing/story planning, tell me if I should do more.


End file.
